


Inheritance

by Shiggityshwa



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon Compliant, Character Development, Death in the Family, Emotional Manipulation, Future Fic, Gen, Kidnapping, Psychological Trauma, Team Bonding, set in season 13ish, team as a family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-23
Updated: 2019-11-25
Packaged: 2020-10-26 23:49:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 13,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20750804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shiggityshwa/pseuds/Shiggityshwa
Summary: Set in fake Season 13 (so two years from the end of AOT). Carolyn Lam has been missing for over a year after being abducted on an off-world mission. SG-1 has a chance to get her back, but at what cost? Deals with psychological and emotional trauma, while pushing the boundaries of what 'family' means.Canon compliant, so there are no pairings, just friendships.Vala POV/Centric





	1. Prologue

“General Landry?”

Stops at the doorway, unsure if she should enter because the man is hunched over his desk, appearing as if he may spring from his desk and knock her down trying to bolt from his own office. This is her third attempt at trying to have a dialogue with her boss, rather, her boss’s boss, and he keeps dodging her, so she assumes he knows what it’s in reference to.

Landry glances up, adjusting the table lamp away from his eyes and takes a more proper position. “Yes, Ms. Mal Doran?”

“I’m wondering if you’ve got just a quick second to talk as—”

“Unfortunately, Ms. Mal Doran, I don’t.” He plucks the spectacles from the bridge of his nose, setting them back on his desk. “We received intel from a rebel faction on a gated planet that may have information about Carolyn. I was just on my way to the debriefing room—where you should be already.”

“Perhaps we could chat along the way—”

“I do not have time.”

“I’ll be very precise.”

The general chuckles dryly while switching off his desk lamp. “Anything that you have to say to me in the sixty seconds it takes to get to—”

“I’m leaving.”

That causes a break in his demeanor. His tired eyes squint together in confusion, her simple words lost in translation, and if Daniel were still here, she would make a joke for him to transfer it into another language for better comprehension.

“You’re leaving?”

“Yes, Sir.” Stands from slouching in the doorway.

“Right now?”

“Not at this very second.” She forces herself to look into his sadden eyes. They’ve lost so many over the years. Samantha is captaining the _Hammond_, Daniel is full time on Atlantis, but Carolyn—she takes a deep inhalation. “But sooner than you’d think.”

“And what do I think is soon?”

“By the end of the week.”

He falls silent again, and then huffs out, “that’s three days from now.”

She pulls a tense, wide grin and shrugs her shoulders, she really did mean to let him know at the beginning of the week, but he is artful at evading conversations which don’t include methods on returning his abducted daughter.

“Is this a leave of absence, or something more—permanent?”

“The latter.”

Stands motionless for more than a few seconds, until those sad, tired eyes get a glimpse of the clock. With a hand he gesticulates that she should clear the door, and she’s a little surprised when he walks beside her as she so calmly suggested before.

“Any particular reason you’ve chosen now to make your grand exit?”

“I’m not Tau’ri, nor am I enlisted in any military faction. I’m free to—”

“Of course, you’re free to leave whenever you’d like, Ms. Mal Doran.”

“Oh,” pauses as he presses the button for the elevator, sort of bouncing on her feet, nervous, not about the conversation, or about the future, just anxious about disapproval, about how others won’t handle it quite as well. “Then what is the problem?”

“You’ve been with the SGC six years.” They step inside the empty elevator, the general stands beside her, staring straight and depresses the button to the proper floor. “What was the flashpoint that’s got you wanting out?”

“Honestly, Sir, I just think I need a change. I’ve never been in one place for so long.” It’s not exactly the entire truth, but it’s enough to get her message across.

“Then why don’t you take a vacation?”

The door opens and she steps forward, but the General falters back, stands stagnant in the empty elevator stall.

“Carolyn is still—”

She warms her smile for him, knowing all to well the turmoil of losing a daughter, of losing family. “Do not doubt for a single second, that as a free agent, I wouldn’t been keeping my eyes shucked for her.”

He appears emotional, even distraught, for just an inkling of a second, then his wispy eyes tuck back under the guise of fatigue he wears so well. Clearing his throat, he accompanies her off the elevator, and she sets her pace to his. “Have you informed Colonel Mitchell and Teal’c that you’re leaving?”

“No, and I would appreciate a tasteful discretion in the matter.”

“You’re going to have to tell them Vala.”

That’s half the problem.

They stop at the conference room door, only making brief, glassy, eye contact and offering a small false grin. “Are you ready for your final mission?”

“As I’ll ever be.”


	2. Most Wanted

The meeting is the same it’s been for the last eighteen months, since the day the poor General pulled himself out of his chair with an ill-fading determination to find his daughter, unfortunately, he had to continue to run operations at the SGC, usually sending them out once a week on some half-pieced lead to where Carolyn was last seen.

He takes all his meals alone in his office, and rarely sleeps off base, if at all. From what she knows, which is quite a bit, communications have further dissolved with his ex-wife.

Now, he stands at the board, reminding her vaguely of Daniel, who she thinks of less and less in the last two years since he left the SGC for Atlantis full-time. The General’s outline is less directed than Daniel’s were, there’s really no chronological output to the words he’s written. She angles her head slightly, hoping to identify a geographical meaning until she leans a bit too far to her left, her chair squeaking and unsteady, and her hair tickling the side of Cameron’s face as she encroaches into his space, until he swats her away.

“At 0600 a rebel faction on the Lucien Alliance controlled planet, P3X-266, contacted the SGC in response to one of the bulletins we posted for Carolyn.”

Their missions very rarely involve anything more than exploring uncharted planets, uncharted by the Tau’ri at least, and putting up flyers of Carolyn offering exorbitant rewards, pleading for a single woman back throughout the galaxy.

In all the times she’s gone missing, no one ever came for her.

Except for one.

“They’re requesting a meet up in a campsite approximately a three hour walk from the gate.”

“What’d the MALP have to say about it.” Cameron is growing tired. Not just of the hunt for Carolyn’s, but at the burdening tasks that life keeps sending his way. He scratches his fingers over the hair on his chin, which has grown a touch grayer in the last few years. 

“MALP came back without any negative results. A little hotter there than here, a little higher UV index.”

Cameron leans back in his chair, his mouth set to say something else, but the hierarchy of his military blinding him. His lips roll together and with a reserved nod, he offers words of agreement without outrightly agreeing. “We’ll bring sunscreen then.”

“How do we know that these rebels are being truthful with us?” Teal’c places his hands on the table gently, strong hands she still tries to arm wrestle with. He let her win once when she was feeling rather despondent, and as stupid as it was, it did elevate her mood.

“Just like always, we don’t.” The General closes up the manila folder, showcasing the thinning hair atop his head as he bows to collect his notes, intent on ending the conversation.

“Normally, it would not pose such a problem, however, with limited access to the stargate—”

In the last two years, they’ve all experienced some horrible hardships. The loss friends, of family. They’ve seen each other crushed to mere fragments of who they were before, she’s been yelled at—not reprimanded—but screamed at in pure vexation by all three men in this room.

Sometimes the others will stick up for her, sometimes they’re too tired.

Sometimes she cries, and sometimes she doesn’t.

There is never an apology issued, yet her forgiveness seems to be unlimited.

The general gains the redness swelling under the gaunt skin on his face at the insinuation, the audacity, that Carolyn might not be worth risking their lives for. The ignorance in thinking she falls under them in his militaristic hierarchy.

She grows tense in her chair, head no longer tilting, seat no longer spinning, but breathing a little more rushed, trying to think of words—any words—that will diffuse the potentially hostile situation. When her mouth opens, Cameron’s hand rests against her arm, not vetoing her words, but offering her an out.

His optimism has run it’s course, and she knows from the intonation of his voice, the stress of his words, that it’s faked, no longer real to him, just a lethargic show. “We’ll just have to be extra careful then.”


	3. Ties

She readies herself in the seldom used woman’s locker room. There were only four other women besides herself on SG teams when she came to Earth. One transferred out, one died, one retired, and one became a mother.

Tries not to let the ties handle her in the way they are apt to do.

The longing for a loved one.

Any loved one.

To rest her head in their lap, sighing contentedly in the commonality.

To have a child stir within her, squirm in her arms.

To just be wanted.

Freedom is what she wants now, away from days where traversing through the gate in search of a weary old general’s daughter is her only duty. Where she falls asleep alone in a gray room buried leagues underneath a mountain. How she stares up at a concrete ceiling and traces imaginary stars, and her hands trace the imaginary scars of where her skin stretched to accommodate another.

Tucks her pants into her boots and yanks on the strings, swapping them under each other like Cameron taught her how to do so many years ago.

Five?

Six?

Tried to put her boot on his shoulder, coquettish and dominant, and he dropped away from her coldly, telling her to tie her own damn boots. Yet, later in the commissary, he defended her when another private accused her of still hosting Qetesh, called her a snake or something along the line, something she wouldn’t have known was an insult until Cameron responded. 

Tugs her jacket on over the black t-shirt and remembers when she received her SG-1 patch. How excited she was, how excited the team was to have her back relatively unscathed from her two-week excursion. They drank at an establishment called a roadhouse and ate an animal carcass covered in sweet sauce, and the next day when a private made insinuating remarks of how she was able to grasp a coveted spot on the team, Teal’c stepped in front of her before she could answer, threatening something in that deep voice of his and cocking an eyebrow in challenge. 

After that, no one ever spoke to her about how unfair it was that she was on the lead team.

With her hair pulled into pigtails, she exits the locker room, turning down the hall to the armory where Cameron and Teal’c stand waiting with weapons in hand.

Plasters a bright smile on her face and a bounce in her step as she approaches them. “How do I look?”

“Turn around.”

When she does so, Cameron yanks on her vest to ensure it’s in place and turns his attention back to his weapon. “You’re good.” But then pauses, drawing his eyes up as she receives her own weapon, a P90, not a zat. “I like the pigtails, very classic.”

Ignoring the guilt of knowing this will be their last assignment together, of not being able to tell the two that she’s abandoning them as well, she holsters her side arm. “I want it to be just like old times.”


	4. Pressure

The planet is just as Landry and the friendly MALP described, dreadfully hot. Within minutes of hopping through the gate, she and the boys discard their jackets, folding them into neat squares and stuffing them into their packs.

She enjoys missions with Cameron and Teal’c, she learns more about them, about their hobbies, families, their idiosyncrasies. Teal’c sleeps heavily in iterations of seven minutes, but can meditate for hours on end, and Cameron’s hip hurts more when it’s going to rain from something he calls the ‘pressure change’. Both of them thoroughly enjoy something called the Superbowl, and even invited her to their viewing party this year.

Usually the first leg of the journey is relatively quiet aside from their scripted exchange of Cameron asking if either of them has ever been to this planet before, and both of them not being able to remember clearly.

“I’m unsure if I have inhabited this planet prior to now.” Teal’c marches behind Cameron, the meadow the gate is in slowly transforms into rolling hilled terrain with forests or jungles beyond that. A large mountain looms in the background, not the requisite gray, but a dark, craggy black. “However, I believe this to be part of Ba’al’s old domain.”

“Why’s that?” Cameron stomps on a rather large stick, snapping it in half, making it easier for the— for her—to traverse over.

“Because it is in the same local as the other planets he ruled.” Teal’c’s answer is of course stoic, but not meant to silence the conversation the way that it does.

They approach the knolls without a word to each other, but each a little out of breath from the sun bearing down on them from directly above. From the periphery of trees, various bugs sing out songs of the heat, a few drone by them, fluffy, large, awkward, dipping from flower to flower.

“Hey, has anyone heard from Sam lately?” Cameron questions as they begin to ascend the first of three hills, after the third the meadow seems to plateau until the treeline, and if the rebels were on the level with them, the encampment should be a few minutes walk into the trees, but that is hardly ever the case.

“I have not spoken with her in several weeks.” Teal’c takes walking almost vertically up the steep hill like it’s a normal stride to the commissary. “The last I had heard, she was commanding the _Hammond_ to launch a strategic attack on Lucien Alliance territory.”

Cameron reaches the top of the first hill, pausing, squinting into the sun while dropping his pack slightly for access to his water. “Yeah, me too.”

“Is there cause for alarm, Colonel Mitchell?”

Teal’c stands beside him as she scrabbles her way up the final crust, pulling herself to stand beside them, actually a few inches further away then she would normally consider.

“Nah,” Cameron finishes a gulp of water and recaps his bottle. “I just worry is all.”

The second hill proves more difficult, and the third even more so. The conversation dwindles, partly due to their exertion in the heat, but also because she isn’t picking up speaking cues, isn’t taking the silence to rope the boys into some sort of question game like ‘would you rather’ or a favorites list.

At the crux of the third hill, they pause again, and she stares through the sweat collected in the basins of her eyes at a treeline that is close, yet appears so much farther than when they started this hike.

“You doing okay there, Daisy?” Cameron nods towards her, as she now stands a full foot farther from them. He’s drinking again, his eyes still squinting and his face very red and shiny.

“Yes.”

“You’re quiet today.” Slips his bottle back and wipes his gleaming forehead against his arm. “Everything okay?”

“Yes, just hot.”

“All right, well let’s stay hydrated. Why don’t we take a quick five to rest and I’ll touch in with Landry.” He drops his pack to the thick green grass and digs through a compartment before pulling out the walkie.

She drops to her bum, pack still on, the sweat consolidating on her back and in the points where her pigtails are tied off. She shifts her legs, feet out in front of her, swimming in a pool of moisture in her heavy boots and sighs.

Teal’c observes her but doesn’t voice any concern.

Grass crunches as Cameron returns, tucking down the antennae of the walkie with his chin. “We’re about half an hour from the rendezvous point.”

He stoops, barely stifling a grunt, and replaces the walkie back into his pack. She often forgets that he doesn’t have the same advantages health wise—aging wise—as she and Teal’c do. She wagers he’s never been in a sarcophagus, and while she has several times, she doesn’t think her longevity as a lowly human born on an impoverish Goa’uld run planet is anywhere equal to Teal’c’s.

They continue on their trek and she hopes that the forest, or jungle considering the climate, will offer some form of solace from the heat, but the canopy of trees simply seems to pack in the humidity. She also hopes that the small talk will cease, because with each step it’s making her feel guiltier and guiltier for wanting to leave, for leaving, but it doesn’t because they’re teammates, they’re friends, they know each other, and this is what they do for fun.

“How is your mother faring, Colonel Mitchell?”

There’s silence and another snap of a twig under a boot heel as they navigate a barely traveled path through closely grown trees and shrubbery. “She’s doing okay, still a bit in shock I think.”

They all traveled back to Auburn a few months ago to support Cameron when it happened. It was very quick the doctors said, something about being a pilot all those years and the change in pressure—again a word she doesn’t understand—but something happened in his father’s brain and he was gone in the same minute.

It was a lovely service, she told Wendy so while pouring her tea at the kitchen table. Cameron and his brother were in the other room arguing about finances, about inheritance, while his two nephews played video games loudly. His brother had recently divorced his wife, who saw no reason to be present for the funeral, and Wendy seemed to be so alone, so lost, so in shock.

“He was a great man who inherently sacrificed in order to keep his country safe, and he loved you a great deal.” She had rehearsed it in her mind, the words she would say, not about his father, but about him if the time came, if he was to die before her.

Wendy had grabbed her hand, wrung her fingers tight around her own, and looked at her with beads of tears packed in the corner of her very red eyes. “I’m glad Cameron has you.” Wendy bounced their hands and the heaviness increased. “Someone so compassionate, so—so—I’m glad one of my boys has someone who loves him back.”

Her mouth opened and closed.

Opened and closed.

Not knowing how to respond, because she sometimes tagged along with Cameron to his family holidays instead of remaining by herself in the mountain. She became a welcome family fixture, but still was completely professional with Cameron, a line she agreed not to cross if he kept bringing her as a travel companion.

Thankfully, she didn’t have to answer as large slam jolted from the other room. Wendy dropped her hand, inhaling deeply, and falling back into her widowed despair.

She ground her teeth down as she pushed from the table, allotted with six wooden chairs that were all sticky with age, and wrenched open the kitchen door, letting the malice words of the brothers spill into the sacred space.

“A little—”

They continued to shout over her, the games blinked and blasted on the television, and in the kitchen, Wendy wept.

She smashed a balled fist into the wall with a grotesque crunch, obviously bruising multiple fingers. Silence befell all four men in the room, and they stared up at her wearing the same stunned face as their matriarch, as she did a moment ago.

“A little _decorum_ would be greatly appreciated in this trying time.”

Cameron stared at her, his face shocked from blank to some amalgamation of emotion including irked and shamed. His mouth opened to address her, but Teal’c opened the creaky front door to the farmhouse, balancing three pizzas in his hands, and a bag of soda hanging from his wrist.

“I have procured dinner.”

This ultimately ended the dispute.

“She’s thinking about selling the house if Brendan doesn’t take it.”

“Why don’t you take it?” Doesn’t think before she asks, keeps all her motions in step, almost ramming into the back of Teal’c because Cameron slows. Hadn’t thought about the implications, that being a farmer in Auburn means that he can’t be a Lieutenant Colonel in the SGC, but his age is gradually taking him, his retirement easily visible on the horizon.

Instead he laughs at her faux pas, moving the low hanging branch of a tree out of the way. “A single guy in a farm that big? I know everyone in Auburn, and I know they’d still talk smack about me.”

She nods, falling silent again, hypnotized by the rhythm of footsteps, the crunch of rotting leaves and detritus as bugs scurry away from their boots.

“She does ask about you, you know.”

Her head snaps up at the acknowledgement, the hesitation, the reluctance to admit, in his voice.

“Wants to know when I’m gonna bring you—guys down again.”

The cover doesn’t fool her, or him, or most definitely not Teal’c, but they let the insinuations slide because they’re friends, and teammates, and unnecessary drama is something she’s learned working closely with these two is unnecessary for a reason.

“Open communication,” Cameron told her as their team began to diminish and she worried, that perhaps, she’d be sent on an unwanted sojourn on some distant planet. “If you have a question or a problem, tell me and I’ll try to help.”

“Your mother was very hospitable, Colonel Mitchell. It would be my pleasure to visit—”

Teal’c’s rare words are cut short by them flowing into a clearing, one they were looking for, by no means as large as the meadows, but big enough that it could be used as an auxiliary campsite to greet visitors one is wary of. There is a smoking campfire and a rudimentary tent set up in a patch of crumbling dirt and backed against the rocky side of a hill, definitely not the imposing mountain she viewed from the gate.

“Looks like we found our new friend.” Cameron takes a step into the clearing, where the long grass begins to fade into a mossy surface and then just soil. “Hello?”

And who they find is the last person she wants to see.


	5. On Impact

She hasn’t seen him for almost four years, and quite honestly, she assumed she’d never see him again. With her an integral part of the SGC, and him still dizzying away in his cons and thievery, she knew there was very little chance of meeting him again, and even less of a chance of being notified of his passing.

He exits the tent, dressed in the garb of a rebel, sullen, dirtied, material that will never be white again even after several washings, everything more of a tenacious brown. His hair, like all the men that surround her, has lightened from brown to gray, to even lighter now. It is not how she remembers him, the cunning man she would wake up to dozing at the foot of her bed, the trinkets he’d reward her with for being a horrible parent before her mother woke and tossed him from the house.

But he stands, good and well, the wrinkles on his face etched deeper, and when he grins at her like a wily crocodile, they darken. “There’s my little girl.”

Immediately she stops her walking, tucking back in behind both Cameron and Teal’c, using their bulky bodies, their broad shoulders, to hide her away from a man she didn’t want to face last time, and certainly doesn’t have the strength to face now.

“Vala.” He waves at her, like parents to their child preforming on stage.

Her response is to duck her head further down.

Teal’c closes the space she occupied, standing shoulder to shoulder with Cameron, who is aware of how tightly she is packed against his back, she knows this through the glance he gives her over his shoulder, his eyes that she won’t meet.

“Vala, come here, let me—”

“Are you the one who called the SGC?” Cameron flat out demands, the hands on his P90 are relaxed, but the weapon is readily available.

When Jacek takes another step, Cameron raises his weapon, Teal’c grabs the butt of, and her father stops his steps, letting out a false gasp. “Really, what kind of hello is this to an old friend?”

“All right.” Cameron approaches her father, the heels of his boots digging into the loamy soil, Teal’c compensates by moving a few inches closer to her. “Hi Jacek, still conning everyone on this side of the galaxy? Great. Did you call SGC about a possible sighting of Dr. Carolyn Lam?”

“Vala, this is ridiculous,” her father talks at her from over Cameron’s shoulder. Though his hands are up in good favor, he doesn’t seem perturbed or frightened by the obvious weapons. “Daddy just wants to—”

Teal’c voice is a grumble, deep from the back of his throat. “Answer Colonel Mitchell’s question before we decide that you are not worth any more of our time.”

Her father stares directly at her, throwing his hands in the air dramatically with a huff. “Yes, I was the one who contacted you.”

“Then you saw Dr. Lam?” Cameron halts his pacing, his weapon still drawn, but relaxed.

“Well, they call her Carolyn around these parts—” Cameron must express that he isn’t interested in the specifics because the next words trip over each other out of her father’s mouth “—but yes, I’ve seen her. I know where she is.”

“Good.” Cameron gestures to an obvious path cleared away behind the tent. “Take us to her.”

“Hey there, it’s not that easy.” Jacek’s stance is relaxed as Cameron steps away from him, investigating the camping grounds, the fire, now smoldering, embering into the already unbearable temperature.

She always hated the smell of fire.

Cameron, toes at a discarded rucksack, and holsters his P90 to his belt. “We get you probably have prior commitments cheating and stealing from strangers—”

“A map and directions will suffice,” Teal’c adds.

“No, no, no.” Jacek takes a step forward and none of them respond. “You guys have it all wrong.”

Silence overtakes the campsite, the wind rustling the leaves in the trees sounding vaguely reminiscent of waves upon a shore. All the shores she’s walked on, taken by upheaval, from slaughter. The sound of reed chimes in the backyard of her childhood home.

She speaks for the first time, her voice as empty as her emotions are. “You want compensation.”

Jacek points to her, his finger jabbing through the air, a grin stretching across his face, bundling under wrinkles. “You always were Daddy’s little genius.”

Cameron’s voice falls as flat as his face. “You want compensation?”

“Yes.”

“For what?” He throws his hands up in dramatic shock that he plays for humor, that manages to get a twinge of a smile tucking in on her lips.

“Well, not only am I going to direct you towards where your Tau’ri doctor is, but I’m also going to show you where to get the money to bribe her capturers into releasing her.”

“Jacek, we have currency—”

“Oh, I know you guys are packed to the brim with great Tau’ri things: weapons, money, communicators—it’s another reason why you know I’m on the level. I could have zatted you and taken all of it.”

“How noble of you,” Teal’c grumbles.

“So.” Cameron pinches the bridge of his nose, leaning against the rockface, trying to get the mission on track. “If we have currency, why won’t it work?”

“Because they don’t want Tau’ri currency.” Jacek lets his words hold in the air, he’s managed to triangulate them a bit, and is standing in the center playing up his showmanship skill with a small spin and a hand flourish. “They want Goa’uld treasure.”

Knows immediately what he’s after, but before she can even shake her head at him, Cameron questions, “And how do we get that?”

Because Cameron, is Tau’ri.

He is loyal and rugged and wants to have done the best job he could at the end of the day.

He hasn’t had to deal with the hardships she has, he doesn’t know about the dark side to being a host, aside from the nonautonomy of one’s body. There’s always been fighting: Goa’uld against Goa’uld, then the uprisings.

Greedy little hands always like to snatch treasure up when no one is looking, so clever traps must be laid.

“Right here.” Jacek stands against the jagged rock, beside a relief, small and hardly noticeable carved into the stone. Words she understands, perhaps Teal’c does as well, telling those of high blood that need only to offer a few drops as sacrifice in order to open the mountainside cache.

“What’s this?” Cameron asks as he slips beside her.

She and Teal’c don’t offer a word.

When it becomes obvious that neither of them will explain, Jacek steps in, leaning by her, making her take a step away. “This is a treasure chest of sorts.”

“Of sorts?”

“It’s opened the same way you open any treasure chest—with a key,” Jacek rubs his hand over the stone and it almost glitters in the heat.

“So what’s the key?”

“I like you,” Jacek laughs, clapping a hand to Cameron’s back, “You catch on fast.”

Cameron isn’t as amused. “Teal’c?”

“It was not uncommon for Goa’uld to create many stockpiles of treasure for convenience on planets they ruled over.”

As Teal’c explains what she already knows, Cameron’s gaze never leaves Jacek as he paces circles around the tiny campsite.

“—however, in order to open one, the sacrifice of blood from someone with Naquadah through their veins.” Teal’c nods to a hole in the stone where one’s hand might slip in to willingly accept injury. Has vague memories swimming around in her head with the fine wines and silk sheets, the smoothness of other bodies against her own, of Qetesh locking away important treasures behind a stone vault, of breaking into found tombs and ruins at the expense of pain.

“So, you brought us here, on the good faith that Teal’c would jam his hand into the cookie jar?” Cameron drags his feet to a stop by the tent, trying to put together Jacek’s plan, one she already knows of because it’s been ingrained in her since childhood. The idea of being Goa’uld allowing for many opportunities for riches, for thieving, for power.

An opportunity so sought after, that the sale of his daughter as a host, was doubly profitable. 

“You’re half right.” Jacek points, abandoning his post beside the stone relief, approaching from the other side of the still smoking fire pit.

Teal’c stalks him.

Her team and her father speak more, but she’s drawn towards the stone wall. When she touches the carved surface, it feels cool in the humid air, in the cinders dancing in the weak wind. Glitters like gold and how many have sacrificed themselves for riches?

A few years ago, she wouldn’t have given a second thought to shoving her hand into the hole.

“I will not sacrifice my—”

But another thought drives her.

An old general who would already be retired if not for his only child being missing.

How she’s slunk around in the shadows and found him crying, blaming himself for being able to protect an entire faction of the military—an entire country—but not his own daughter. How his desk is littered with pictures of her, and maps, and contact information because he’s not the best father, but he is a father.

How he spoke to her last time when Jacek cheated her like she was just another one of his targets and she was reminded how alone she really is. Invited her into his office the next day and as she tried to play off the pain of abandonment with a bubbly exterior and grin, he offered up her father’s old apartment, because it was in his name after all. Offered to give her a stipend for furniture and moving, for paintings and curtains.

How with teary eyes she turned him down, because she didn’t belong out of the mountain even more than she belonged underneath it.

Silently, she removes her watch, tossing it to the ground, and a puff of dust kicks up on impact.

“Nice of you to offer, but caches like this one require the blood from royalty.”

“Royalty?”

“He means a previous system—”

Before her teammates make the connection.

Before they try to stop her, she jams her hand into the crevice, listening to the sickening clunk as the mechanism within drops down into the middle of her upturned palm, puncturing her hand.


	6. The Exchange Rate

“Vala!” It’s said half in concern, half in irritation, because she does this sometimes, things that make their missions go smoother, things she doesn’t tell Cameron about. He darts to towards her and the rock relief.

Teal’c follows.

Jacek just grins.

Grunts as the spike recoils and the blood runs warm and sticky over the side of her palm, dropping on what she supposes is a collection plate below. She makes a fist, increasing the flow of blood, offering more of herself.

The door groans as it shudders open.

“Take your hand out.” Cameron drops to his knees beside her, whipping off his pack and setting it on the ground as he rifles through the contents.

Her hand is beginning to grow warm, and her head a little light. She leans a shoulder into the rock with a gasp, squeezing her hand still as the door’s only halfway open. “It’s almost done, then—”

“Take your damn hand out of the rock.”

That is a command.

If she didn’t know it by his tone, the glare he gives looking up at her is all the evidence she needs.

He almost bows before her, yanking out the first aid kit and tossing his pack aside. She gives one final squeeze before removing her hand, because if she doesn’t now, he very likely will tear her away from the stone.

Blood spills from her, droplets specking across the dust, her pants and his shoes, dribbling through her fingers.

He rips the cap off a foul-smelling liquid and grabs her hand from where she’s pulled it against her chest—staining the vest he double checked that morning—pouring over half of the liquid into her palm.

She hisses, swats with her free hand, braces her feet against his as she tries to break away, but he holds solid.

“That’s my little girl,” Jacek praises before Teal’c marches towards him, grabbing him by the back of his garb, and dragging him over to the opened cache.

Cameron shoves a handful of gauze into her palm and presses down with an intense pressure which only serves to make her hand hurt more.

“Stop.”

“This needs to be disinfected immediately.”

“Just—leave—it—”

“Well, if it gets infected, we have no doctor.”

“Believe me, I was taking that into account.” The compression releases from her hand, just as she thinks she cannot take it anymore.

His eyes no longer cut into her, but down turned, gentle, soft with his concern.

Teal’c drags the chest out of the rock relief, the door staying three-quarters open, as Cameron sits on a log beside her, carefully wrapping a bandage around her hand. His brow is coarse and sweating, and she knows he is very upset with her for not discussing her sacrificial action before enacting it, but his fingers are cool, careful as they watch her bleed through the prerequisite white square of gauze as he wraps more around her palm.

“I don’t think it needs—”

Words strain through his gritting teeth, “shut up, Vala.”

The brashness hurts more than the injury.

Teal’c emits a very low grunt as he flips the solid stone lid off of the makeshift chest revealing a bountiful selection of treasure from chalices, to coins, to ornate festival accoutrements.

She had a crown as Qetesh that she would wear during full moons and bacchanalias, an ornate piece molded from gold with rubies inset and made in the resemblance of a lotus—Qetesh’s favorites. That crown is one of the only parts she misses because when she wore that crown, no one back talked her from fear, no one disagreed with her, or put her down, or forgot about her. She was the center of entire civilizations, and they waited on bated breath for her decrees.

Now she wears what the rest of the SGC assume are fake diamond trinkets in her hair, because they assume she’s trying to be flashy, be cute and bouncy and bubbly. Really, she knows that if they require a bribe for information or, in some scenarios, their freedom, she can offer up one of her real jeweled hair clippies as recompense. 

Sometimes the call of dancing underneath a full moon while primitive instruments of reeds and sheepskin drums are played is still appealing, the undulation and cheers of a crowd drunk on the love of her. The feeling is so overpowering it almost makes her forget that their love stemmed from fear, the slickness of blood and sinewy tissue of still beating hearts in her palm.

The thump of her own heartbeat in the half hole in her palm.

“I’d say sixty-forty is a pretty fair share, don’t you think?” Jacek stands proudly akimbo beside the chest, his eyes glazed over as he inventories the goodies he can see.

Always taught her the first step after accruing treasure was inventory. They would find a safe haven away from people, in a cave or perhaps the woods, and catalogue what they had stolen or conned, from the time she could barely balance on two feet, to the point where she was entering adulthood, much stealthier than him, but respectful and still allowing him the larger dividend.

“I would say that one hundred percent of this treasure belongs to Vala Mal Doran.” Teal’c’s voice drones, indicating his annoyance.

“How’s that big guy?”

There’s heaviness on her hand as Cameron tapes the bandages down, they’re tight enough to help clot her blood, but not tight enough to cause her unease. All her medical prowess was garnered through trial and error, through cuts and burns and gun shot wounds that needed to be mended with herself the only willing one to help. Through laying low in an abbey for a month while debt collectors with heavy hands trailed her. Often wonders how the Tau’ri have learned to heal the way they do, especially without common knowledge of the Goa’uld healing device.

“Because she literally just gave her blood to get it.” Cameron presses the final piece of tape in place, and when his eyes dart up, perhaps knowing she’s watching how diligently his fingers work, they dart down just as quickly. “Maybe you missed that part.”

“And maybe you forgot, I was the one who told you about the treasure, and I’m the one who’s already drawn out a map for you to help you find your little doctor friend.” Jacek produces a map from within his robe, a scroll rolled up something akin to when they went in search of the device to destroy the Ori so many years ago. “Besides, you’ll need less than forty percent to buy back your friend, and then you can pocket the rest.”

“Why would we need to purchase Dr. Lam?” Teal’c cocks an eyebrow and slowly turns his head towards Jacek.

“Well she’s part of a nomadic tribe now, they’re not going to just let you—”

She thinks of Carolyn, a woman of Earth, who has only known Earth, sitting out an watching the night sky full of unknown constellations she can’t even trace for solace. How General Landry worries for her, and frets, pushing back fears of the worst, while striving forth with unbridled optimism.

How she has been in similar situations, sold to slave traders, to weapons dealers, to men, and waited for Jacek to come to her aid.

And how he never did once.

Holds her head in her uninjured hand, the raw beat of a headache beginning just behind her eyes, simmering at her temples. “Just—give Jacek what he wants.”

Jacek tosses his hands in the air with an elaborate sigh, “would it kill you to call me Dad?”

She shoots to her feet, tottering as Cameron reaches his hands forward to help steady her, but retracts them just as quickly, perhaps at the cadence of her voice, or the malice expression on her face, because Jacek deserve nothing. None of what she’s ever given him, emotionally, as a daughter, even in conversation, and his narcissistic attitude that places her peril below his income is an irksome flame that has been fanned throughout her life.

“It very well might.”

Cameron stands beside her. Moves slowly, purposefully, his back turned away from Jacek and Teal’c and his hand calmly gripping her arm. When she doesn’t wrench away, he leans in, his voice soft. “You okay?”

“I want him gone.”

He purses his lips, his eyes bare, and his nod is scarcely visible before he releases her and pivots on his heel. “Pack up half the treasure.”

Teal’c doesn’t argue, just offers a solemn nod and retrieves a cloth satchel from the front part of his pack.

“Hey, hey.” Jacek trails Cameron as he walks by, unconcerned as she flops back down to the log, as her hand stings and pulses, as her eyes water with what she convinces herself is the pain of her headache. “I said forty.”

Cameron stops so fast, Jacek almost runs into him, he pivots, but this time is different, not militaristic and regimented, more predatory. “And I said fifty.”

“All right, all right.” Jacek grins and pats Cameron’s shoulder twice. “You boys drive a hard bargain, but you always deliver, so I think I can let you slide on this one.”

She sits and waits while they pack up the treasure, while Jacek hands over the map, pointing to a dirt trail leading further into the trees until they’re ready to go, Teal’c with the satchel now tied to the outside of his pack, and Cameron with a permanent scowl as he gestures with a nod towards the woods.

Doesn’t speak a word to the man who is her father, who should be so much more. Her provider, her protector, but in actuality couldn’t be very much less. She’s so afraid of turning into him, of being blinded by baubles, by earnings and paydays that she forgets what’s truly important, the people who really matter, the exchange rate of treasure for her soul.

When they’re a few steps into the trees, her hand limp at her side, the other cuffed against her pack strap lest he come and wrench it away from her, Jacek shouts from the campsite, “thanks Kitten, Daddy loves ya.”

Her head hangs lower than it ever has as she tries to hide her embarrassment, her shame and failure because she pried herself away from that life, changed the way she lived after so many years of relying on no one, and yet it came back to get her. Perhaps it’s because she did it for the attention of one man, one man who decided that Atlantis was his next endeavor and sat her down across the table from him at a candlelit restaurant and politely asked, without sentiment, for her not to accompany him.

“You are not like him,” Teal’c offers over the constant stomp of detritus under combat boots.

“You never were,” Cameron concludes.


	7. Topsy-Turvy

The village is East from the campsite, and the path Jacek sets them on curves around the mountain and through the jungle. Initially, her steps are uneasy and precarious as she’s still lightheaded from the loss of blood. Teal’c and Cameron converse about what strategies they should use if the nomadic group accompanying Dr. Lam turn out to be violent, or more numerous in number than Jacek has let on.

Thankfully, the sun is beginning to set, the sky dyed warm pinks and oranges through the leaves of a black speckled canopy. The temperature has also begun to drop, and her bare arms are beginning to prickle as the singing bugs pick up their tune in spades, the forest housing a symphony of insects.

“Hey Vala, pick up the pace,” Cameron calls from the break in the trees leading to a new meadow, similar from the one the gate rests in, but without the three knolls. There are lightening bugs zipping over the long grass that the weakening light is slowly staining blue.

“Sorry,” she mutters, but her boots are heavier on the ends of her legs, like someone has filled them with rocks. Each step she takes is leaden. Her arms swing at her side like weighted pendulums causing one of her backpack straps to slip free and when her pack shifts, so does her center of gravity, causing her to stumble.

She manages to catch herself before falling flat on her face, only snag the toe of her boot on an uncovered root a few steps later, tripping her up. She lands less than gracefully with a grunt with her two hands catching her weight.

As she tries to blink away the starbursts behind her eyes, the rapid sound of feet crunching over tall grass and field flowers grows louder until a strong hand is on her shoulder, another under her bicep.

“Vala Mal Doran, are you injured?” Teal’c hefts her up easily, like the claw in those prize machines at a few of the restaurants she’s been lucky enough to visit.

“Took a little tumble there, Princess.” Cameron holds her good hand, supporting the weight of her through his bicep as she wobbles on her feet. “You feeling okay?”

“I’m—” before she can answer ‘fine’ and walk away, she banks into him, as one of her knees gives out under her own weight. Her head feels as if it’s floating, detached to her body, all topsy-turvy and in the clouds.

“Let’s sit you down.” He nods to Teal’c and they both help her to a log left solitary in the middle of the field, her bum slips from the top and she lands on the dusty soil with a bump and a chattering of her teeth.

She tries to keep her eyes open and focused, but they keep burning after a few seconds. Both men rifle through their bags producing medical supplies, a flashlight, a bottle of water. She notices the pack from her back has been mislaid.

“Colonel Mitchell,” Teal’c beckons as he shines the flashlight to her injured hand, which as bled through the very generous amount of bandages Cameron previously wrapped her up in.

“Vala, why the hell didn’t you—”

“I—I didn’t know.” Stares down at her hand in disbelief, because in the waning sunlight she saw pristine white bandages and felt a little flare of pain. Now the gauze sits sopping with her blood, bright red.

“Did the injury open again?” Teal’c hold the flashlight even as Cameron quickly unwraps her hand, holding it in one of his while his other hand reels away the bandages.

Once he gets down to the puncture wound, her blood starts to flow over the side of her cupped palm onto the ground.

“Oh shit.” He snatches a shirt from his pack and plants it into her hand, crunching his around it. “What do we do?”

Teal’c stares motionless, and her head feels oddly lighter as the blood slowly begins to permeate the balled t-shirt.

“Any ideas?”

Panicking. Her boss—her friend, is panicking because they are at least a five hour walk from the gate, and with the amount of blood she’s lost, it’s obvious, she won’t make it back.

“My pack.” Her head is heavy, but relieved of sagging when Teal’c shifts inwards to her, offering his muscled shoulder as a pillow.

With jerky movements sifts through her bag.

“What are we looking for—Vala—Vala!” Cameron smooths back the hair from her face, it’s not sticking with sweat anymore, she’s suddenly very cold and realizes she’s slightly trembling. The sky has become awfully dark in a short amount of time. The lightening bugs have disappeared, and it’s become deadly silent. His hands still on her cheeks, stabilizing her. “What are we looking for?”

“This.” Teal’c pulls something small from her bag, what looks like an orange gem—the Goa’uld healing device.

The last thing she sees before she loses consciousness.


	8. An Auburn Kitchen

The warm glow of a fire wakes her, the soft edging of the flames over the backdrop of the treeline helping her place herself geologically. She shifts to her side, her body very heavy and clumsy, and finds that the cool night whispering at her cheek is abated by being tucked in snugly with the blanket from her pack.

Her stirring rouses Cameron sitting across the fire from her, his eyes blinking back to reality and back from whatever daydreaming adventure he went on while staring at the flames.

“Morning Princess,” he greets with the same playful banter, but his voice is scratchy, sounds dry as he clears his throat and creeps around to her side.

She narrows her eyes at the surroundings but can only see black beyond the dome of light containing them. “Is it really morning already?”

“Nope.” He crouches and eventually sits beside her, his BDUs rustling as his hands fall over his knees. “A little after nine SGC time. You were only out for about an hour.”

“What happened? I don’t remember—” Brings a hand up to clear the clumping bangs from her forehead, but finds it bandaged up. Pristine white gauze, not as heavy as before.

“You did that very stupid, sacrificial thing you do before consulting the team.” When she struggles to sit up, he helps her with a prying hand under each of her arms. “You lost a bunch of blood, got woozy, and passed out.”

“I remember the blood.” Sits up on the log beside him, huddling into the blanket around her shoulders, trying to find whatever vision he was looking for within the campfire. “There was so much blood.”

“Yeah, you scared the shit out of me.” Doesn’t speak to her, but to the fire. When she glances over at him, his face is terse, his jaw set, his eyes not even acknowledging her. But he inhales, and again, blinks away from his reverie, the emotion, the fear, the same shame from an Auburn kitchen, washes from his face, and one of those false grins of optimism pluck at his lips. “But you and Teal’c thought fast.”

Fills in the blanks, Teal’c with the healing device and her waking up alive, relatively unscathed, with a bit of a stinging hand, a case of the dizzies, and a moderate headache. “Where is Muscles? I should probably thank him.”

“Big boy conked out. He healed you as much as he could, but even if he won’t admit it, the walk took a lot out of him.”

“We’re all getting so old.”

The crackling of the fire fills their silence, and if she concentrates hard enough it sounds like popcorn for a movie night at Sam’s house. Women were always such a bother to get along with, could easily lure men with a lip twitch and a hip swivel, but most women saw through her ways, looked down on her. Sam was her first real female friend, and when she decided to captain _the Hammond_, her heart broke just a little.

Broke a little more in a candlelit restaurant where she still wasn’t allowed to order three types of martini, and when she excused herself to go to the washroom to cry in peace, because another of her friends was abandoning her, he insisted on accompanying her to ensure her safety.

“Landry, uh, told me about your plans on leaving.” Cameron scratches behind his ear awkwardly, choosing not to look at her again.

Her breathing stutters, and the headache piling behind her eyes becomes much more prominent. Instinctively, she packs herself tighter into the blanket.

“You could have told me, you know,” his voice soft, too soft, almost falling beneath sailing embers.

“I didn’t want you to be upset.”

“Of course I’m gonna be upset, Vala.” He tempers his voice again when it rises on her name, tucks the emotion back into his body.

“I don’t mean to leave you shorthanded.”

“I don’t give a shit about that. I’m losing—I just—maybe I don’t deal with change as well as I thought.”

The tree bugs kick up again, a wave of noise thrown at them in night chirrups. The fire dances in his eyes when a wind swirls round, and his fingers loosely grab at his knees.

“Why now?”

“Pardon?”

“Why are you leaving now?” Turns to her, trying to pull the emotion from his face, the fire dancing for another reason, his lips pulled tight but twitching, she can see the cracks, in his voice, at his mouth, in his skin. Years of grinding his body to nothing, to prove nothing, to end up nothing. “I’d like to say I deserve an answer, but I want you to tell me because you want to.”

“Because it’s time to live my life.” Makes sure the words flow smoothly, easy, counteracting the sharp jabs of his huffed language.

“You’ve been doing that just fine at the SGC for—”

“No, Cameron, I want to live _my_ life.”

He stands, scrubbing his hands on his pants and points to the fire. “I’m gonna go get more firewood.”

“I want to relax, I want to have a home—”

“You have a home—”

“I want to have a family.”

“You have a family!” His shout silences all the tree bugs, dies the wind down, creates a frictionless fire. Only his voice exists in the meadow, booming out and echoing in all the directions.

When the recoil fades and the same look of stunned shame from his mother’s house entertains his face, she continues, “I want to be happy Cameron.”

Silence engulfs them again as he tosses nearby brush onto the fire and smoke hisses, sizzling into the air and fading into the sky. In a whisper, she asks, more of herself, so unsure, “don’t I deserve to be happy?”

“You do.” He tosses the last dry reed onto the fire and stares out at the trees. “But couldn’t you just be happy here?”


	9. Scrawled Roots

Falls asleep at some point, and when she wakes, finds herself on the same side of the campfire, but Cameron has retired for the night, being replaced in watch by Teal’c. He sits across the fire from her, his back ramrod straight, his eyes open, staring within the flame, similar to Cameron, but not searching for something, for answers, just content to let his mind wander.

She clears her throat, digging her elbows into the dusty soil below and pushing herself into a sitting position. The palm of her right hand still throbs and in hindsight, she probably shouldn’t have used her dominant hand as a blood sacrifice. The pain, the wooziness in her head has increased, probably due to laying supine for so long on the ground,. Behind her eyes burns regardless of if she stares into the fire or not.

“How are you feeling, Vala Mal Doran?” His body doesn’t move, his eyes don’t scroll to her, and it makes his voice ethereal, contained within the flames.

“Fine.” She doesn’t, she actually feels much worse than she did when she was speaking with Cameron, but she hoists herself up on the log, her blanket sliding to the ground, sullen with dry earth, with crunchy leaves and scrawled roots. “I suppose I have you to thank for that.”

“No ‘thank you’ is necessary.” The tree bugs are silent, the wind doesn’t rustle through the trees or the long reeds that surround their campsite. Everything is still. Silent. Stuck. “An exchange in the same manner of your blood for information on Dr. Lam.”

“Well, thank you anyway—”

“Do you remember when you denied me my privacy and followed me to my mother’s grave?”

Sighs deeply, trying to ignore the thickness in the air, the stench of soot and burning grass cuts through her nostrils every few seconds. Swirls right into her nose, piling within her, making her head large and airy. “I remember when we visited a Jaffa village, and finding you bowing in a cemetery after we missed our check-in with General Landry.”

“I was upset at your presence in such a hallowed space.”

She apologized then, placed what she intended to be a comforting hand on his shoulder to draw him out of his meditation, and he shrugged it off so harshly, that she still feels the shock of it. She meant no harm, but he had the walkie, and if General Landry didn’t hear from them, in his kidnapped daughter addled mind, they were likely to get reprimanded when he overreacted.

She was likely to take it to heart.

“I’m sorry,” she apologizes again, because sometimes it’s easier not to argue. Sometimes people burst from frustration, from mission upon mission of searching for a single person in an entire universe, of withdrawal from the absence of a single person, from jealousy—being envious of a normal life, a single spouse, a child or two in a kitchen with a hearth and a herb garden.

“It is I, who should be apologizing to you.”

Leans forward, the blanket falling to her lap, cocking an eyebrow at him. “I don’t—”

“I become very—emotional at the thought of my mother.” His eyes drag away from the fire, scale until they meet hers and his face remains stoic, his words weighted with seriousness. “You said some very kind words to me. You tried to bring solace to a situation which can never garner it—but you tried to anyway. Thank you for that, Vala Mal Doran.”

“Muscles, are you getting sentimental with me because I’m leaving?”

“I merely wish to state words that I might not get another chance to state.”

Grows fatigued again, her hand stiff under bandages, her fingers sore to move, and she slides her bum back onto the dirt, her head resting back against her pack. His feet crunch over the ground as he rounds the fire, pulling the blanket over her shoulders again.

Before he withdraws, her uninjured hand covers his briefly.

“I love you too, Muscles.”


	10. Focused on the Trees

Missions such as these where they brag about sleeping outside under the stars rarely result in a decent night’s rest. The sylvan and serene surroundings become a novelty upon waking with a stiff back and pains reminiscent of labor up her spine.

This, this is not that.

Knows she is unwell as soon as she wakes.

She is cold, entirely too cold for waking in a popup tent—being the only active woman on SG-1 affords her the luxury of a solo tent—just after dawn on a near tropical planet. The sky is colored with the same vibrancy as the sunset of last night, but the hues are more blurred to her as she tries to stand, rolling to her knees, her head hanging, fanning the immense pain behind her eyes.

She is not stupid. She knows what this is.

She also knows she’s not going to explain it to either of her teammates who cannot do a single thing.

Stands precariously, her feet feel light and she doesn’t have the depth, the knowledge, of when to stop stepping, but she can fake it until she makes it to the woods.

She’s very good at that.

As she unzips the tent, the smell of Cameron’s famous oatmeal wafts her way, and the scent clenches her stomach into a ball and peaks up her salivation for an entirely different reason. She can’t even consider eating right now.

She steps, somewhat normally, through the open maw of the tent and out into the campsite. Her skin is gray in the dawn light, and she manages to keep her footing, hoping to avoid any conversation about how sick she truly is.

Because they can’t help.

Teal’c sits on the log she’s fairly certain she was laying by for the majority of the night, but she doesn’t remember facing the tents. Perhaps she was more focused on the trees behind the tents than the green tarp material billowing in the wind.

“Morning Princess.” Cameron greets, stirring a bubbling pot that smells of several Tau’ri spices over the open flames. Things like this make him feel more rugged, more manly—he’s admitted so much to her. “Sleep okay?”

“Yes,” she croaks out, her fingers balling the material of her unfurled jacket sleeves.

“I hope you’re not mad, I took third watch so you and Teal’c could get some more rest.” The flames still crackle, and the audible slosh of the oatmeal might make her physically ill if she doesn’t take leave. “I carried you to your tent so the bugs wouldn’t eat you alive.”

“No, it’s—” files through the words in her mind trying to find an appropriate response that will abort this conversation “—quite all right.”

He pauses his stirring, Teal’c pauses patching up a hole in the auxiliary tent tarp, and both observe her for a moment in silence before Cameron tentatively asks, “you feeling okay?”

“Yes.” Wraps her arms around her body in case they’re able to see the harm being done within her, to her organs, the quake in her limbs, the sweat drenching through her black t-shirt despite being absolutely freezing.

“I just need to—” she trails off hoping that, after however many years, they can fill in the blank of where she’s going to voyage to next.

They do not.

“Need to what?” Cameron stands wiping his hands against his BDU pants and pausing to knead his fingers into his thigh.

“Relieve myself.”

“Oh. Yeah. Right.” Nods and gestures towards the path they came through the woods by. “Take care of nature’s call, but hurry back. I made the cinnamon and nutmeg oatmeal you love, and if my thigh has anything to say about it, it’s going to rain soon.”

“Of course,” agrees as she plods over the flat ground of the meadow and Cameron flits back to breakfast. Teal’c watches her leave—as he witnessed the exchanges—without a single word. He’s not much of a morning person anymore.

She follows the trail until she’s sure they cannot see her anymore and then diverts into the trees. Her palms soaked with what she believes is rainwater until she unclasps her arms from around her body and the shirt beneath her jacket peels away from her skin. There might be thunder looming over the hills, but it might be in her heart. The heart that she hears in her ear over the panting sounds of her overexertion.

The Goa’uld were many things.

Clever, stubborn, ruthless, apathetic, but most of all, they were vengeful. Some system lords, when stashing their treasure caches among stone and brick walls, would taint the piercing object with a form of poison, a slow acting one to hinder any thieves that actually made it away with any loot.

Knows this because she did it as Qetesh more than once.

Stood over wailing people who just needed a source of income as they howled in agony and succumbed to the sickness while she flaunted the antidote.

Dying in this manner is apt, and she’s not about to argue the poetics of it.

Just knew she had to get away from her team because they don’t deserve this.

They will not watch her die.

She watched Adria as she died not once, but twice. Thankfully she didn’t leave the body she carried so ensconced within her for almost ten months. Nothing for the SGC coroner to tag for autopsy—just disappeared as quickly as she had appeared within her.

An instant.

Then she had to act as if it didn’t matter, as if she didn’t matter, as if there wasn’t a hole burned into her heart.

She can feel her heartbeat in her hand again, and when she places her bandaged palm against the trunk of a tree for balance, she finds it heavy, laden with blood, droplets dripping over the foliage.

Takes only a few more steps before toppling into a random clearing caused by a fallen tree. The blades of grass itch at her face, but the soil is soft, fertile, verdant.

A beautiful resting place is more than she could have asked for.

More than she deserves.

And she closes her eyes feeling very fortunate.


	11. Hush Hush

The crying of a baby awakens her.

Back on the Ori vessel, listening to Adria as they whisked her away, squalling, hungry and so tiny, so previously safe.

But there is rustling which negates her assumption, leaves crunching, and a voice cooing reassuring words to an infant which hiccups and slows its wails.

Someone squeezes her bare arm, and when she opens her eyes she finds her skin the color of a corpse, drenched in sweat, and with pieces of detritus and dollops of blood decorating her. Then the woman before her comes into view, and the soft-spoken words evaporate into the candor she’s used to receiving from the doctor.

“Vala, did you shove your dominant hand in to unlock Goa’uld treasure?”

“Dr. Lam.” She grins reaching her uninjured hand out to touch the side of the woman’s face, her fingertips tickling the curtain of hair before the other woman recoils. “We have been searching for—”

“You don’t have a lot of time.” Lam relaxes on her heels and there’s something tucked tight against her body, wrapped like a sling, or a pack. The doctor’s shoulders hunch as she sticks the end of a needle into a bowl and sucks up the amber liquid within. “Answer the question.”

“I’m not greedy—not—not anymore—I just—”

Lam flips to her, the calmness dissolved from her face as her coarse eyebrows furrow. “Vala!”

“Yes, I did but—”

“I’m going to give you the antidote, but I need to inject it—”

“I hate needles, can’t you—”

“The sepsis is too far progressed.” Lam doesn’t even give her time to reply before slamming the needle into her arm, the arm with the hand she sacrificed. The hand that is a dark purple and still oozing a thick, almost black colored blood. The doctor must take notice of her attention on her mangled hand. “In Goa’uld, the poison attacks the Naquadah in the blood.”

Which is why she felt worse after Teal’c valiant effort to heal her.

A warmth courses through her and her limbs grow very heavy, her body even more exhausted.

As her eyes close, she hears a baby cry again.


	12. The Threat of Rain

The humidity is palpable against her skin when she chooses to open her eyes again. She’s very confused, not quite sure of where she’s been and where she’s going, just remembers using the last of her strength to trudge through the jungle on her own.

She can’t remember what she was running from.

Her blurry vision begins to clear to the familiar canopy rustling above her, black silhouetted leaves against the overcast gray sky beyond. Above the birds chirping in distress, she can hear the low grumble of thunder rolling in the distance, perhaps over those three knolls, remembers them because her legs still ache.

To her left she hears a familiar gurgle, the muffled coo of a baby suckling.

“Good, you’re up.” Dr. Lam adjusts the infant at her chest. The sling holding the child, shrouding them from the rain threatening to fall at any second.

Cameron’s hip is never wrong.

“I was worried I was too late.”

“What—” presses herself up, palms digging into the parched ground, ashes sticking to her sweat-soaked skin. “What happened?”

“You had blood poisoning from a laced Goa’uld trap. Teal’c exacerbated it by trying to heal you.” Lam points to her hand, the right one still digging into the infertile soil. “I stitched up your hand too, try to keep it clean—”

“Carolyn—” Her name dropping from her mouth seems so intimate, so personal when they really don’t know each other that well. Only briefly through hallway passings and injury dressings “—we’ve been trying to find you for so long.”

“I know.” Plucks the child from her chest, her hands disappearing under the sling, rearranging, organizing, returning with a serene infant thrown into a deep fatigue from feeding.

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”

“What happened?” Sits, bringing her legs up and reliving the stiffness from a five-hour hike. Her body tenses as she remembers meeting her father, nothing specific, just his jester grin as he waved goodbye to her. “I mean—where were you?”

“I didn’t want to be found.”

“Well, that much I gathered.”

Lam replaces the infant, no older than a few weeks, into the sling, ensconcing them against her chest again. She stands, the attempt is stunted at first, the shift of gravity from delivering a weight attached to her for nine months is disorientating—she remembers that much. “Please don’t tell the others where I am.”

“Carolyn.” Becomes concerned at her quick exit, the fear that she might not be free and healthy and happy, and instead under someone’s control. “Surely, you can spare a minute to—”

“The minute I could spare, I spent on saving you.” Her eyes draw into a glare, and there’s a flash of the Dr. Lam she remembers reprimanding high-ranking military officials for not staying up to date on their vaccinations.

No dried leaves or sticks make a sound as the doctor steps her way back towards the treeline, and something clicks inside of her, ignoring her wishes and just concentrating on Landry’s fallen face.

“What should I tell your father?”

Carolyn stops, her back tensing, her legs together and strong as she stands straight. “He’s worried, isn’t he?”

Accepts the pause in the doctor’s exit, springing precariously to her own feet again, and crossing the clearing. “He’s nearly out of his mind with concern.”

Carolyn turns to meet her, her lips pressed tightly, her face flushed and healthy, her eyes not baring more fatigue then granted to a new mother. “You’re thinking of leaving too, aren’t you?”

She doesn’t answer because somehow everyone came to the same realization at approximately the same moment as her. Somehow they all knew simultaneously that her tenor had expired. “How—”

“I heard Cameron’s little outburst at your campfire.” Her lips nudge into a slight grin. “He’s an old soul at heart, he can’t bare too much change.”

Feels the same slight, woeful, grin grow on her own face, stumbling over the same realization. “I can’t convince you to come back with us, can I?”

She shakes her head, her expression growing rueful as she bounces the baby in her arms and another coo emits from the sling. “I’m fulfilled, I’m saving more people than I ever could on Earth. I have the loving family I’ve always wanted.”

“Are you happy?”

Carolyn beams down at her child, tickling their cheek with her finger. “The happiest I’ve ever been.”

“Then that’s all that matters, I suppose.”

The doctor rifles through the pockets on her garb, not so unlike the one Jacek was wearing in her hazy memories, burlap tatters and ropes, but they seem comfy enough. She retrieves a stained piece of paper, folded over several times and stretches forward to give it to her, one of her hands still cradling the baby. “I was going to ask you to deliver this to my dad, but if you’re thinking of leaving, you’re more than welcome to come with us.” 

She accepts the letter, slipping it into a secret pocket on the inside of her jacket, because she’s sure the rain is coming within minutes now. “While I appreciate your selfless offer, I’d like to start living my own life now.”

“How do you know you weren’t already?”

A loud roar of thunder interrupts her equally confused and witty response. It’s much closer, looming almost on top of them as they both raise their eyes to the sky, now dark enough to be indistinguishable from the canopy leaves.

Neither continues the conversation because they don’t need to. Somehow in the strife they’ve faced, different yet equal, they understand each other. Carolyn offers her a nod before retreating back towards the jungle to return to her family, when she still cannot define that word herself.

Just a useless, and empty word.

“Some friendly advice?” Carolyn calls just before she’s slipped invisible and soundless back into the treeline. “Don’t waste your time searching for something you already have.”


	13. The Sheep

It starts to rain when Carolyn is out of view.

Only spitting while she dissects the conversation word for word, as the letter crumples in her jacket pocket.

It isn’t until the rain grows thicker, fatter, more frequent, and threatening to drench said sacred letter, that she spins, walking back along the way she came.

The water brings a clary scent into the air, the scent of freshness, the lingering stench of fire, of smoke finally clearing from her nose.

She still doesn’t know what to do.

Still cannot decide.

Carolyn spoke some pertinent words, but they are just that—words.

Her emotions are an entirely different facet of her being and as she translates what the doctor said, she tries to pair her emotions with it. Will she regret it if she leaves? Is she going to find something better?

Her feet shuffle, her hand only stinging a bit, the stitches in her palm covered by a very basic piece of gauze that she doesn’t bleed through. The rain is downpouring now, soaking her through, her hair sopping, the sleeves of her jacket dripping, her boots squishing with each step, but a very secret pocket still bone dry.

She still travels adjacent to the path carved by many footfalls.

Her movements halt because there is no use traveling in a sheet of rain. There is no use traveling without a destination unless she’s being pursued, which at this point, she believes she isn’t.

But just as suddenly, the rain turns off. Latent drops still plummet from the canopy, but birds start to chirp, elated with the short shower. A few seconds later, the tree bugs start humming.

A few seconds after that sloppy footsteps can be heard down the path.

She’s less than five feet away, standing between shrubbery and trees. As the steps grow closer, the conversation between her two teammates clarifies.

“He didn’t help us.” Cameron is practically shouting, dragging his legs perhaps due to the rain pressure in his hip. “I can’t believe the bastard didn’t help us.”

“Considering our previous interactions, I do not understand why you are surprised.”

Cameron swerves in front of Teal’c facing him, throwing his hands into the air. “Because he’s her father.”

Teal’c absorbs the outburst, their team leader’s heavy panting, and clarifies, “I do not believe Jacek has ever been a father to Vala Mal Doran.”

“And normally I wouldn’t pull crap like him off my shoe, but she’s out there Teal’c.” Cameron gestures wildly to the surrounding trees. “She’s out there hurt, maybe dying, and the guy won’t—” he huffs loudly, water still pours off of his jacket and from his hair. A large bird in the distance caws. “—She’s out there.”

Teal’c claps a hand down onto Cameron’s shoulder and offers a small smile for reassurance. “We will find her Colonel Mitchell.”

Cameron slightly nods several times and sidesteps to continue to walk beside Teal’c. “We’re not leaving here until we do.”

“Agreed.”

Words.

Only words.

But so much greater.

Cadences and tones.

Motivations and emotions.

The strive to see someone alive and healthy again. The inability to leave behind a loved one, even when faced with physical pain and burdens. The need to feel complete among others, of being better around certain people.

The important omittance of a satchel attached to Teal’c pack.

“We should have beat the crap out of him,” Cameron mutters as they start to round the bend. They will shuffle by her shortly.

“It is not our place.”

“He treats her like crap.”

“Vala Mal Doran has never expressed her want for—”

“She doesn’t have to.” Cameron’s voice grows loud again, but he doesn’t stop walking, his left leg starting to drag a bit. “She shouldn’t have to. She’s family.”

She takes the ten steps forward, diverging her in their path mere feet before them. Impulsive. She’s always been impulsive with decisions, working whims into her strategy, ignoring logic in place of intuition, which usually places her in direct danger.

There is no danger here, just people, and perhaps that’s what was deterring her to begin with.

Cameron and Teal’c stop their slow gait, and observe her for a moment, her eyes are very wide, and she tries to crack a grin for them, but she can’t. Feels the reservation, the fear of being denied, a sheep straying from the flock one too many times for the farmer to care—written off goods.

But Cameron, hobbles forward, closing the few steps between them, and collects her in an embrace. His jacket is heavy and leaking, his skin is frozen and wet as he presses his cheek against the top of her head, laughing, rocking her a bit.

When he pulls back, one of his hands around each of her biceps, he announces, “you look like shit.”

Teal’c collects her in a half hug while her nascent grin blooms, she laughs with them, blinking away the tears in her eyes as she leans against his chest, and bounces Cameron’s hand.

She’s home.


	14. Epilogue: Chemistry, he called it.

He finally allows her to take the seat across the desk from him, a desk she sat at once, and when she tried to get comfortable, when she tried to put her feet up, Samantha tutted her.

Tuts her from The_ Hammond_ a galaxy over now.

Usually has to trail the General down the hallways, accompany him on brief sojourns between meetings and map plottings, and intergalactic space calls where Sam asks about her with a rueful smile, unable to see her peeking in from the slit in the barely ajar door.

Trailed the man the same way Daniel told her he did once to talk to the general about allowing her to be on the team, to give her a chance, and then force her to answer inane questions about how she felt about herself, embarrass her because she wasn’t good enough—still isn’t good enough—to walk among the heroes when her past is so tainted, laying in tatters like the gowns she would parade around in as Qetesh.

Now Daniel calls in from Atlantis, and always asks four questions before making the fifth question about her. Sometimes he asks to talk to her directly, but she still remembers the way the candlelight spilled over his face, and the accomplished grin he wore after breaking up with her when they had never really entered into a relationship to begin with.

Landry says nothing.

Has said nothing for the fifteen minutes as he sits at his desk, the small lamp on and light pouring over the note his only daughter—his only child—left to him. His chin, then his lips, disappear into the palm of his hand as he scans over the words again, and again. Wonders if he hears the words in his own inner monologue.

Wonders if he hears them in Carolyn’s voice.

“This was all she gave to you?” His voice strains through his fingers, the gruffness getting caught, dissipating with emotion.

“Yes.” Unconsciously scrolls her fingers over the still healing wound in her hand, the dip of knotted stitches, the raise where skin has fused together.

“Did she—” croaks as his voice catches again, and he shoves away from the desk, leaning back in his chair, his eyes growing red-rimmed and glittering again. “Is she happy?”

“Over the six years I’ve known Carolyn, that was by far the happiest I’ve ever seen her.”

He nods, once, twice, before clicking off the soft table lamp. “She’s happy and she’s safe, that’s all that matters.”

“I’m glad you see it that way, Sir.” The word, the formal address still feels awkward in her mouth sometimes, but this is how she knows him. He is acclaimed in the army and she has no idea why, but he’s meant to receive those words, even if they’re from someone as alien as her.

“Well, you should probably head back to your room.” For a moment she thinks she’s been reprimanded for acting without first consulting Cameron, but the old, but not-so-tired general gruffs, “to pack.”

“I’m not sure I need to.”

The comment catches him in the middle of standing from his chair, the big important general chair that she still remembers felt hard under her behind. His face falls slack, oddly emotionless for a man who has felt so much in the last year. “Does this mean you’re reconsidering leaving?”

She follows his actions, standing as he walks to the door, his gait a little less pronounced, his steps a little slower, with not so much inertia, finally slipping into the way his life should be for a man his age—general or not.

“Only if you’ll have me again.”

A gentle chortle escapes him, jiggling his body as he holds the door open for her, and the action is odd and yet familiar. “It would be a hell of a lot easier if you stayed.”

His answer is apt, of course it would be easier for her to keep her spot than to audition countless members of other teams to fill it. They tried doing that when Sam left, and again when Daniel did, and Cameron refused to add another to the team for some reason dealing with science.

Chemistry, he called it.

They walk to the elevator, and the general depresses the button, in the reflection of the closed doors his hands hold professionally at his side, and her hair sparkles with enough trinkets to bring all of SG-1 home safe.

The door chimes and she steps in, but the general hovers at the doorway with a sentimental expression on his face, happy turned eyes and a slight quiver to his smile. “One daughter leaving is enough.”

Words.

And words again.

Before she can respond to him, her mouth and brain unable to form anything to express the swell of pride in her chest and the first free falling tear until he’s marched down the hall back towards his office, leaving her with only that proud grin.


End file.
